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My wife and I were just talking about Bitcoin and I had this wild theory. This is obviously BS, but I had fun exploring this idea. Here it goes: What if Bitcoi

by medius 9y ago

My wife and I were just talking about Bitcoin and I had this wild theory. This is obviously BS, but I had fun exploring this idea. Here it goes: What if Bitcoin/blockchain is a actually a strong AI? The AI manipulated humans via lucrative mining to spend ever increasing amount of electricity and other resources on running it. It's distributed and hence cannot be shut down easily. If there was an application taking up so much power and we didn't know what it did, it would be pretty suspicious. So instead of trying to be secret, the AI went public and promised wealth, no-regulations, etc. to humans to do its bidding. How else would you do it if you were a strong AI? Maybe the things we know about blockchain is just the surface level. What if all the hashes that are generated are part of code+data that runs and trains this AI? And hey, we don't know who Satoshi Nakamoto is and if that person is even human. Disclaimer: I don't have any background in encryption, crypto currency, blockchain, have no stake in any *coin, etc. But I do love science fiction.

mike4921 9y ago
I love it! For all the bad things bitcoin has brought, I have to say it makes me feel like I'm living in a cyberpunk novel! Snow Crash...Neuromancer.... I think people are focusing on all the negatives and overlooking all the fascinating aspects of whats going on. The internet has basically spontaneously created an interesting and suspicious technology. I think it's really only been possible thanks to the increasingly effective and available means of energy production, such that almost a consumer commodity. Neal Stephenson, if you're reading this, this would make an amazing sci-fi novel.
- pbw 9y ago
  I think I've heard various sci-fi authors grousing it's hard to write these days because reality is so sci-fi and outlandish (Trump).
pbw 9y ago
The end of George Dyson's classic article on Google goes: For 30 years I have been wondering, what indication of its existence might we expect from a true AI? Certainly not any explicit revelation, which might spark a movement to pull the plug. Anomalous accumulation or creation of wealth might be a sign, or an unquenchable thirst for raw information, storage space, and processing cycles, or a concerted attempt to secure an uninterrupted, autonomous power supply. But the real sign, I suspect, would be a circle of cheerful, contented, intellectually and physically well-nourished people surrounding the AI. There wouldn't be any need for True Believers, or the downloading of human brains or anything sinister like that: just a gradual, gentle, pervasive and mutually beneficial contact between us and a growing something else. This remains a non-testable hypothesis, for now. The best description comes from science fiction writer Simon Ings: When our machines overtook us, too complex and efficient for us to control, they did it so fast and so smoothly and so usefully, only a fool or a prophet would have dared complain." https://www.edge.org/conversation/turing-39s-cathedral https://www.edge.org/conversation/turing-39s-cathedral

by medius 9y ago

mike4921 9y ago

I love it! For all the bad things bitcoin has brought, I have to say it makes me feel like I'm living in a cyberpunk novel! Snow Crash...Neuromancer.... I think people are focusing on all the negatives and overlooking all the fascinating aspects of whats going on. The internet has basically spontaneously created an interesting and suspicious technology. I think it's really only been possible thanks to the increasingly effective and available means of energy production, such that almost a consumer commodity. Neal Stephenson, if you're reading this, this would make an amazing sci-fi novel.

pbw 9y ago
I think I've heard various sci-fi authors grousing it's hard to write these days because reality is so sci-fi and outlandish (Trump).

pbw 9y ago

The end of George Dyson's classic article on Google goes: For 30 years I have been wondering, what indication of its existence might we expect from a true AI? Certainly not any explicit revelation, which might spark a movement to pull the plug. Anomalous accumulation or creation of wealth might be a sign, or an unquenchable thirst for raw information, storage space, and processing cycles, or a concerted attempt to secure an uninterrupted, autonomous power supply. But the real sign, I suspect, would be a circle of cheerful, contented, intellectually and physically well-nourished people surrounding the AI. There wouldn't be any need for True Believers, or the downloading of human brains or anything sinister like that: just a gradual, gentle, pervasive and mutually beneficial contact between us and a growing something else. This remains a non-testable hypothesis, for now. The best description comes from science fiction writer Simon Ings: When our machines overtook us, too complex and efficient for us to control, they did it so fast and so smoothly and so usefully, only a fool or a prophet would have dared complain." https://www.edge.org/conversation/turing-39s-cathedral https://www.edge.org/conversation/turing-39s-cathedral